


assume the burrito is warm

by lokasbarn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-13
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-12-26 11:52:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/965617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokasbarn/pseuds/lokasbarn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas and Dean get together, then Benny joins them, and they have a baby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	assume the burrito is warm

**Author's Note:**

> Jimmy is established as having passed away in this AU. Cas is still an envessel'd angel, and Jimmy was a transman.
> 
> This started yesterday after I needed a break from NGE, and it's very very stream-of-consciousness. It's been edited, but doesn't have that beta'd polish, so expect, like, a misplaced comma or something.

The contrast between Cas and everyone else has always been glaringly obvious to Dean. It’s the way he held– still, holds himself. Just shy of ram-rod straight, chin lifted, walking and standing a little more imposingly than a human man. Jimmy’s clothes were badly-fitted to his former body; they gave Cas an air of rumpled awkwardness.

However, he’s ditched the rundown real estate agent get-up. The skin he wears belongs solely to him and he wears it well, it fits. It contains him- houses the immaterial, head-breaking wave of light and sound that is his trueform. It reigns him in, even when he surlily assures Dean that, despite refusing to break for lunch, and in the oppressive mid-afternoon humidity, he can and will empty the truck before the day is done.

So, reality-altering beings from another dimension, when they’ve fused themselves with new bones and muscles and nerves, they get heatstroke. They can get ill, and they need cool water and a quiet place to rest.

The contrast is still there, Dean sees it, strangers are aware of it if their lingering, slightly uneasy glances are to be interpreted correctly. Cas doesn’t blend in seamlessly, even though he fits the scenery. It lessens over time though– it isn’t the mystical mojo aura that surrounds Cas that routinely keeps people at a distance.

The look of borderline pensive frustration constantly on Cas’s face gives him the appearance of someone entirely unimpressed with how their day is going. At first Dean would jump up to explain something, to demonstrate, but after a few actual scowls he’s settled into watching from the sidelines. Cas’s got it, and if not he’ll get it. A kiss or two, or three, or an hour spent pressing his lips to the corner of Castiel’s mouth, and his hands, his temples, and his thighs, work wonders on that perpetual frown. Dean gets close and Cas is quick to wrap him up in his arms, both of them sunk into the couch (which is slowly but surely losing all of its cushioning to their combined weight) marathoning Star Trek. There are 754 episodes of Star Trek, and there are the movies too (the reboot is the first piece that Cas saw, and it holds a special place in his heart, which means endless rewatches). This is hallowed but familiar ground to Dean, and he passes the boring episodes tracing the tattoos Cas has started collecting.

The biggest piece is the blackwork on his left arm, all of his skin swallowed by ink, save for where it’s interrupted by Enochian runes. Those he liked to puzzle out, and when he understood them, read them silently to himself. There’s a diagram for something... math-y on his right shoulder, leading down into a map of what he thinks might be Ireland circa the Middle Ages. So many lines punctuated by tiny letters that will eventually become indecipherable as Cas ages. Exactly like a map, which Dean feels he’ll be filling in and exploring for the rest of his days.

Old age is making him sentimental (“Dean, you’re thirty-eight, how is that old?”), and he laughs at himself, and clicks the television off.

Cas isn’t one for sex; the mood rarely strikes him, and it doesn’t last long. Dean, damn it, he wants to make Cas feel good, he’s seen that Cas is clearly enjoying himself when they fuck. It takes them time (Dean, it takes Dean time, really) to adjust and find ways around Cas’s near complete asexuality. Rarely, sometimes every other month, there are three-day long stretches when all Cas really wants to do is eat boxes of Entenmann’s doughnuts in between bouts of sinking onto Dean’s cock and refusing to move. Or, refusing to get off, even after they’re both spent, because Cas _moves_.

They’ve discussed the possibility of bringing someone or someones into their sex lives, maybe their romantic lives. It’s an effort on Dean’s part to lose the possessiveness that developed in the wake of Cas’s constant disappearances. He wasn’t prone to “marking his territory” before, he’s not an aggro piece of shit. Cas is relatively new to this game, and they agreed that if someone piqued his interest, he’d let Dean know. There are experiences they can discover and work out together.

Benny, eventually, rather remarkably given Cas’s attitude towards him in Purgatory, is who Cas becomes fond of. Though nowhere near as old as Cas and far less removed from humanity as a species, there are some things Benny understands about Castiel that Dean doesn’t. Modifications or not the body tangled around Dean in bed, the hand that brushes his when bringing him breakfast, the mouth and throat that form loud throaty sounds of approval when either of them eats Cas out– it’s no longer human. It walks and talks and acts like a human, most of the time, but Cas removes it from being one of Dean’s kind. Benny knows, and in this he and Castiel can support each other.

There are a myriad of reasons why the three of them fit together, why they grow around each other without suffocating, why there is comfort and warmth at the end of the day in their small corner apartment. They become more readily apparent, these systems that tie them together, when Cas becomes pregnant.

It’s an accident which they really should have seen coming. Jimmy felt good with a binder, with his walk, if he kept his hair short and unruly. Before everything went to shit (before Cas showed up), apparently he’d decided surgery wasn’t for him, not when T-therapy brought him this far in transitioning, and he was comfortable.

Cas is... his gender– as far as Dean can understand, as much as Cas could apply humans terms, is cis. Sort of. Angels identify differently in their different classes, and differently from each other. Cas is something like, a hurricane? There were a lot of waves, folding into themselves and outward, and a lot of roaring, from Cas’s description. He was created somewhat in the ocean’s image (or the ocean in his), and he felt it suited him to be that kind of Seraph. There are pronouns, or something close to them, in Enochian, that he uses, but human masculine pronouns work just fine as far as he’s concerned. They don’t apply to him much, save as a category for Benny and Dean to use; both of whom, after intensive googling, asked if “ze” or its cousins might be preferred. Maybe those were close to the Enochian?

A little, because “ze” was less rigid, but generally Cas was used to and liked “he” well enough. If either of them wanted to refer to Cas between them using the Enochian terms, Cas taught it to them gladly, but for simplicity’s sake they all stuck to masculine pronouns.

It is surprisingly easy for both Dean and Benny to work their minds and tongue around the phrase “he’s pregnant”.

_“Sam, he’s, uh– he’s pregnant. You’re gonna be an uncle.”_

-

_“No, no, not for my wife. My boyfri- er fiance? Yeah, I'm picking it up for him, he's pregnant. Been kind of tired lately.”_

-

_“He’s pregnant... no really.”_

The response outside of their own circle of friends ranges from congratulatory to suspicious. As if they’re trying to get away with a snide little prank. Mostly good, if hesitant, as if Dean misspoke or they heard him incorrectly, and would rather not bring up Dean’s mistake or their own malfunctioning hearing.

Once, Cas encounters a woman while shopping for a winter coat that will fit him, who rather unsubtly grills him for a story. He answers her bluntly, neither in the mood nor having the energy to be “pleasant”, and she is wearing him down to “barely civil”. By far the worst concern troll he’s had to deal with since he started showing (concern troll a term he’d familiarized himself with when the talk about pronouns happened), he repeatedly shuts her down with a glare or a curt answer, only to have her actually reach out and touch his belly.

 

This store is the last he is prepared to visit for the week, because there is a blizzard coming that, although it won’t shut down commerce in Chicago, is going to make getting around overly difficult. His body is weighed down with the nephilim’s physical form and his Grace with the rest of their being. Katy, his manager, very kindly managed to secure leave for him for the last few weeks, but he is still tired. Dean reminds him that between Benny’s income and his own they are doing fine. There’s no reason to worry; yet, he does, it’s not something he can help. The importance of money and the very real fear of being without it never left Cas after the couple years he was completely human, that he spent away from any support. All of this– coupled with the hassle of hunting down a new coat because his current one simply refuses to close, the one he has worn all day, and has left him freezing, because he cannot expend any of his Grace in keeping himself warm outside, or he’d have to stop and sit every other block– feels like it has fallen onto his shoulders and he has reached his absolute goddamned threshold for nonsense.

Cas isn’t one for violence, he prefers solving things as diplomatically as possible, even if that means stepping away altogether. It is a titanic exercise in self-control not to break this woman’s wrist and yank her hand away. He could, after all, heal it immediately. So quickly she wouldn’t be sure what happened, only that she might run away from him. She’d be frightened, and maybe that would make her keep her hands to herself in the future.

“Take your hand off of me.”

He doesn’t give in to the temptation. It wouldn’t be worth the effort, and using that much energy would likely leave him panting and supporting himself on a rack. Whatever it is that makes her pull away, his tone or his glare, whatever, he doesn’t care. Cas grabs the black... cape, it would appear to be, when he has to tug it open to check for the size. It looks like it’ll fit, it doesn’t have buttons or a zipper he’ll have to wrestle with, and it’s wool.

The woman has disappeared by the time he’s finished inspecting it. It’ll do.

_-_-_

Nephilim are strange. They’re volatile, they can be dangerous. They are born when they’re ready and not when they’re expected. Scripture tells Dean they were born giants, and Dean assumes it’s a metaphor or an exaggeration. Possibly an incorrect translation.

Turns out, it’s completely accurate, which gives Dean a heart attack while Benny shakes his head in disbelief.

“What– what happens to the ones who give birth?”

“They often died– somethingthatwon’t happen to me, Dean.”

“Get explainin’, Cas, before he keels over.”

Castiel is an angel, and he can control the surge in the nephilim’s power when it’s born. It’s similar, he tells them, to a solar flare, maybe a nuclear reactor melting down. When his labor starts, as it does a week later, it will all come down to focus.

“Does it hurt?”

Cas breathes deeply and looks over at Dean, staring at him for a moment before answering that, yes, of course it does, but not in anyway Dean might understand.

“I meant, like, your body, Cas. You don’t feel it?”

“There are contractions, and yes, I do.” Cas weaves his fingers in with Dean’s, both of their hands submerged. The bathroom is the quietest room in the apartment, the soundproofing done when it was built keeps all the noise out, even though there’s a window facing a main street just above Cas’s head.

Cas had asked to be left alone this morning, only calling for either Dean or Benny to help him into the bath before sending them away. Benny didn’t have to go to work until noon, and he was much better at heeding Cas’s wish, but both of them found excuses to wander past or near the bathroom door. When Benny left for the day, now virtually alone in the house, with no one to pretend to shoot the shit with, and definitely not focusing on the book he’d pulled down from the shelf, Dean found himself knocking and asking Cas if he could come in and keep him company. He’d been allowed, if he promised to stay silent.

Another three hours have passed since then, the water in the bath is chilled, and Dean keeps carefully stroking Cas’s hair out of his eyes.

“Dean, help me out of here?”

“Yeah, 'course. Hold onto me.”

Still a little damp, Cas ends up sitting cross-legged in the middle of their bed. Dean asks if he’s going to meditate, and if he should leave, but Cas shakes his head and tugs him onto the bed, wanting to keep holding hands. Since there’s no other way to situate himself comfortably, Dean ends up sitting just behind and to the side, leaning against Cas’s back, his cheek on Cas’s shoulder. They counterbalance each other that way, and in the quiet, Dean slips into, perhaps not a trance, but a contemplative state, and he ceases to feel attached to himself wholly, save for when Cas squeezes his hand.

Benny finds them like that, and he’s glad he made it back in time. Dean is loose-limbed and looks half asleep, while Cas breathes heavily once every few minutes, his brow furrowed while he stares at nothing. There’s a gravitational pull in the room, or so it seems, that starts at Cas and ends just under Benny’s sternum. Christ, he’d wager it’s an actual feeling, unable to resist padding towards them as quietly as he can.

“Benny?” The angel's voice is tired growl.

“It’s me, Cas.”

“Wake Dean, and draw another bath.”

Dean doesn’t startle when Benny pats his cheek, only mumbles something about the timing of Castiel’s contractions before getting to his feet, and helping Cas to his. While they wait for the bath to fill, all three of them stand close together at the side of the tub, Cas sandwiched in the middle. They rock back and forth a bit, the rushing water surprisingly calming despite the volume.

Once they’ve lowered Cas in Benny sits on the toilet, and Dean takes up the spot he had earlier. It seems entirely too long before anything happens (though it’s only ten minutes and four rounds of contractions by Benny’s watch). When Cas cries out, his eyes squeezed shut for a moment before he opens them again, and they’re glowing.

“Cas?” This is not the time to panic, Dean doesn’t mean to panic, and he knows his erratic heartbeat must be thunder in Benny’s ears

“The– you don’t have to shield your eyes, don’t worry.” Cas uses his grip on Dean’s hand to lever himself into a more seated position, and he braces his feet against the bottom of the tub.

“Now? You’re– now?”

“I want to push.”

Benny joins Dean on the floor, brushing against and nearly on top of each other, unsure of what they should do (they can’t do anything, they know that) or what they should say (they can only mumble encouragement and how much does that help). Cas groans, huffing and catching his breath between pushes, short ones and ones that seem to last forever, until the glow in his eyes sparks.

The nephilim is fighting him, annoyed that Castiel wants to confine them to such a tiny vessel. He urges them to accept the body, as it is, that his has grown for them, cajoles and commands in turns. For a moment the nephilim escapes his hold, and there is pain inside his vessel so fierce Castiel fears he is being ripped apart.

“You can trust me.” he whispers to them. The baby’s head has fully crowned, if Benny’s yelp is anything to go by, and Castiel pulls his hand away from Dean’s to reach down and touch it. It’s warm and a little sticky, and something wells up in Cas’s chest, threatening to smother him. That's his, that's the baby he's been carrying for so long, just there, the baby is _tangible_.

It’s what convinces the nephilim that Castiel means them no harm by keeping their vessel small, and they let go willingly, _finally_. With the nephilim’s power no longer a threat, he focuses instead on getting the baby born, and he rides out contraction after contraction, pushing until the head is fully out. When the shoulders have rotated, Cas reaches down with both hands, feeling Dean’s fingers brushing his own. He pushes again, once more, and gently pulls the rest of the baby’s body out.

Utter relief washes over him; he waited and grew heavier and heavier, pinned underneath himself at times, hoping that at the end his effort wouldn’t be in vain, and he has done it. The baby cries out, tiny little sounds, their chest rising and falling quickly against his own.

Benny is biting his lip, his eyes red-rimmed, and he whispers to Cas that he did a good job. Dean is wiping furiously at his eyes, his lips pulled into a tight smile in an effort not to cry, as he complains about not being able to see past the water works.

“Cas, you, how are you feeling? Jesus...”

“I’m fine.” It comes out in a gasp, and he finds his eyes are also welling up as he tries to drink in the image of the baby, here in person and solid, every bit the nephilim he carried in his Grace compressed into this vulnerable little thing.

Eventually the cord is cut (and Dean is entirely too nervous of hurting either Cas or the baby when he discovers how tough the cord is, and make’s Benny do it) and he delivers the placenta. Though in the depths of his bones, in his Grace, he feels exhausted, his body heals quickly, and he asks to have a shower alone (with the door left open) before getting back into bed to rest.

Feeding the baby proves difficult at first, as they don’t latch onto him immediately. His breasts haven’t grown as large as he’d been led to believe they might, but they’re a sore weight on his chest, made worse by their fullness. The steady, or at least semi-steady, pull from the baby does ease the discomfort, and Benny and Dean have made sure he is well-supported. Cas isn’t sure if, despite reasonable size, he’ll really be able to provide enough milk on his own. Although even if he does, he thinks a break from having something attached to his chest so often during the day will be reason enough to buy formula.

He smiles when Dean joins him in bed, informing him Benny has gone out for food.

“Doesn’t wanna cook, you know?”

Castiel hums in agreement, letting his head roll onto Dean’s shoulder. He’s grateful to Benny for the moment of peace, although he is still slightly saddened. Vampires can’t have children the way most creatures can; this nephilim is Dean and Castiel’s. Irrationally, given he knows it is impossible for several reasons, Castiel wishes it could belong genetically to the three of them. Benny hasn’t told them if he’ll be staying with them much longer... neither Dean nor Castiel want him to go. Their home isn’t very large, but it would feel vast and empty without the vampire to filling the space.

Dean has too much energy, he’s riding on a wave of euphoria (of relief, who is he kidding, nothing went _wrong_ ) and it’s not like he did any of the work today. Once Cas goes to sleep he’ll go clean the kitchen or something. For now he runs his hand through Cas’s hair, watches him and the baby. Mostly he studies the contrast between the baby’s new, smooth skin (my god they’re a big baby, oh my god that’s his baby) and Castiel’s. Solid black on one side, cradling the baby’s back, lines forming maps and graphs shifting as Cas touches the baby’s face and body. It makes Dean wonder how much of Cas himself, as he is, is represented in those tattoos, how much of the Nephilim is like him. If their baby is going to want to be like a storm at sea...

They name the baby Matilda.


End file.
